The Toronto International Film Festival or TIFF is a huge event in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Over 300,000 people attend this festival. The tickets are a bit of a headache to get. I personally think it is a “red-tape” nightmare. However, if you can endue their archaic process of buying tickets, picking films and attending them, then you will have a great time.

There are also local film festivals that may be available in your area. In my area, there is the Ancaster Film Fest (blogspot link) which, is tied in with the Toronto Film Festival. It is a great event for people who live in the Hamilton, Ancaster, and surrounding areas. It has however, grown enormously in size. It has increased in attendance so much that they have made an additional time for patrons to view all the films. One showing is usually at 4:00PM and the other is at 7:00PM. At least for the 7:00PM showing it is advisable to get there two hours earlier to get a decent seat. They show their films on a Monday night in Ancaster, at Showcase Cinema in the Meadowlands.

I did enjoy the earlier years of the Ancaster Film Fest when it was a smaller, more personal experience, however, they have some great films. If you are willing to take the time to get a seat, you will enjoy the film experience. They even have guest speakers who may have produced, acted in, or directed the films.

If anyone has been to any of these festivals, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

6 Responses

Hi Devorah,
I have thought,it will be nice to pay you a visit back. One of my interests in life in addition to social media, psychiatry research, dancing, and languages (I should start a blog on that,too maybe) is cinema. I did three very amateur short movies to show to my medical students @ the last months of my PhD back in Turkey. They were about patient-doctor’s relations, from a sufistic (you can google Mevlana) perspective. Therefore, I did enjoy your blog and this post, particularly. I would have a suggestion though. You put the links to the festivals. Would not it be better, if you add the dates for each festival in the post/text?
Thanks for creating this blog. I love the magic of cinema.
Kaan

How very interesting Kaan — all your interests and achievements. You are a filmmaker as well. There is the Hamilton Television and Film group that you may want to join. If so I will send out an invitation to you. Also, I am linked to many filmmakers on linkedin as well, if you are interested.

I thought the dates of the festivals were included in the links I posted, but that is a good idea to add them into the post itself. I will endeavor to do that ASAP. If you have the time, why not start a blog on cinema? I am sure it would be a very interesting read.

I haven’t gone to this years films at the Ancaster Film Fest. The group that I went with got so small that it would end up I go it on my own. It’s more fun with more people. I went to the Ancaster Film Fest for over six years. I am still on the mailing list and try to rent some of the films that they have shown. I have plans to attend again in the future. If you plan to attend, it is very hard to get a membership these days. You have to stand on line for quite a bit on a certain day at a certain time. If you try to go as a non-member the prices are slightly higher. Members are allowed to get their seats ASAP; non-members have to wait to see how many members come by a certain time. The non-members prospects of getting halfway decent seats are not very good.

I have only been to The Toronto Film Festival and The Ancaster Film Fest. I would like to go to the others to see the films, but not the glitz. Well, at least only a little of the glitz and a mega-amount of films.

The films that I recall off hand are The Machinist, Snow Cake, and one of my favorites, The Kite Runner.

I LOVE the Toronto Film Festival. When I was in high school the film festival was around the corner. My friends and I would go in our catholic school uniforms, stalk the stars and try to sneak into hotels by pretending that we were children on the stars.

There are also a lot of great smaller film festivals that are more focused on certain topics.